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March 25, 2008

Cisco Blogs to Kill the Joy for Cisco Bloggers

Cisco ran into some trouble with anonymous blogging by one of its employees. In dealing with the embarrassment (and hey, potential litigation) from the revelation that the popular Troll Tracker blog was written by its own Rick Frankel, the company has made a public statement about its new policies regarding anonymous blogging. On its own anonymous blog.

Cisco’s official blog, The Platform, has a post (official, yes, but technically anonymous, signed only by “Cisco”) called “Lessons Learned,” in which the company gives a mea-peripherally-culpa and talks about the new era of blogging rules to be enjoyed by Cisco’s 63,000 employees.

“Our recent experiences have shown us that as corporate blogging becomes more prevalent, new questions arise about transparency and etiquette,” says the Voice of Cisco. Much as we enjoyed the Troll Tracker blog, we’d have to wonder how new the question “Should I anonymously put forward opinions about court cases to which I or my company are a party?” really is. But hey, Cisco says it learned lessons. It didn’t say it was a fast learner.

The crux of the new policy appears to be:

“If you comment on any aspect of the company’s business or any
policy issue the company is involved in where you have responsibility
for Cisco’s engagement, you must clearly identify yourself as a Cisco
employee in your postings or blog site(s) and include a disclaimer that
the views are your own and not those of Cisco. In addition, Cisco
employees should not circulate postings that they know are written by
other employees without informing the recipient that the source was
within Cisco.”

All good, all sensible. But it doesn’t really get to the heart of
the matter for the rest of us, which is this: While Frenkel remains a
Cisco lawyer, Patent Troll Tracker has been dormant (or at least hidden
from the public) since its author’s dramatic self-disclosure. And no
new champion in the epic battle against patent trolls has risen — no, Howrey does not count.

IP law is complex and confusing and, on occasion, a real slog. What we
need is firebrands to post caustic manifestos (under 500 words, please)
and screeds, to take shots at lawyers, IP holders, courts. For the love
of all that’s legal, we need entertainment.
Come home, Rick Frankel, all is forgiven (except by the guy who posted
the energetic attack in the comments on the “Lessons Learned” post).